Musical Memory - What's Going On?

Dear Greame,

I don't have an answer for you, but totally agrre with you. Even favourite films bare watching perhaps annually, and books return after years, but not sooner. Quite right. And yet I can listen to a piece of Bach, sometimes twice in a row with equal pleasure, and then again next day! And then it will be even nicer a week later sometimes. You could not do that with a video.

But consider this, in a lifetime a classical soloist may perform his core repertoire hundreds of times, and the fact that older artists are often the most illuminating as musicians, can only lead me to one conclusion. Music is beyond complete comprehension. It works at a level that does not require total understanding in any single listening and each [if the music is great enough] is only a preparation for the next listen! And greater understanding and deeper affection. I almost suspect that if we totally understood the spirit in any specific piece of music it stands a very good chance of dying off for us! In a way music is the ultimate abstract art ...

ATB from George

Conscious and Subconscious mind. We live in our conscious minds (by definition it is all we clearly 'know'), but the subconscious is the rest of the Iceburg - much larger in extent, and the 'real you'.

We use our conscious minds more in Films; the visual system is more connected to the conscious reasoning intellect.

With music the ears connect more to the subconscious and also primal instincts. All creativity comes from the subconscious - music is a creative art-form, it stimulates and feeds the subconscious 'real you'.

The conscious self 'sits on-top' and experiences the results as pleasure and wonder; you can consciously intellectually pick at music, but the bulk of the response bypasses the intellect entirely.

This is what is so good about music - and the very reason I first made my own personal discovery of the effect in my early teens; it 'stopped my mind' and gave me something deeper which I did not comprehend, but fed a deeper need.

That is why you need to keep coming back for more.

Just some thoughts

DB.

DB, is what you are saying your views or real world discoveries?

It does makes sense, as you can absorb music as background, but that doesn't work too well for film or books.

Re: DB, is what you are saying your views or real world discoveries?

All this information is known in the 'Real World', but not often collated together and concisely stated. Our present mode of science likes to seperate everything into jealously guarded 'disciplines' with little attempt at synthesis.

So no - they are facts - and they are also part of my forum-friendly views on this.

'Discoveries' usually imply peer-agreement in a narrow field; all important discoveries were rubbished initially for many decades by the majority of scientific contemporaries.

But they are only views with no claim that you should accept them on my dubious authority  

One has the fine instrument of the conscious mind and associated intellect to help guide you.

Unfortunately - or probably better fortunately, it plays little part in musical appreciation.

DB.

First let me say that I'm not into spiritual things at all.

But I would say that we like to "live" through movies and music.  But music is more close to  something that we can shape with our self, while movie with image are providing way much more information that we can't control so it's difficult to project our self in it.  And there something about listening to music that (in lack of better word) is closer to some kind of meditation.  What I'm trying to say is that it's easier to connect with it.

Not sure if it's making any sense to you... 

Thanks for the thoughtful replies.

Is it a base primal desire mechanism at work?.  What other things might fit into that category that we begin in our teens I wonder.....and might they be connected? G

DB it was a genuine question, maybe not very well worded.

You have answered in so much as "research" is a specific challenge and does not generally come together with others research.

Agree with the posts regarding music being cerebral. Most main stream religions use music as a medium for mediation or praise and worship.  Gregorian chants coral works hymns IMO all connect with the our subconscious mind, or soul if you are religious. It is no coisidence that Van Morrison for instance has studied many of the major religions and releases albums and songs with titles like , No Guru no Method no Teacher, Hymns to the Silence , Avalon, In to the Mystic etc. which I personal  have been returning to for years.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

Twelfth Night.

Regards Graham.

> But I would say that we like to "live" through movies and music.

Not sure about movies, but music is at its best art for art sake, it doesn't try to preach to you, it simply says this is - take it or leave it. I like songs that are not drawn from the writer's personal experience, but are stories. I tend to listen to a variety of music though I do have my favourites which I play a lot. HMHB I play over and over until I think i know all the words and then I play it some more. 

To me, musical memory is a bit like olfactory memory.  You know the feeling . . . you smell a woman's perfume and it immediately reminds you of an ex-girlfriend who wore that scent.  Emotions (be they good or bad!!) are stirred.

Music is a bit like that for me.  My 4 years at college (university) were some of the best years of my life, and I listened to music a LOT back then.  So when I listen to that same music now, 30 years later, it also stirs some emotions of fond memories.  It's a bit subconscious it seems, this emotional stirring. (For no apparent reason, Yes "Tales From Topographic Oceans" really has this effect on me.  I think I spent long hours listening to it in my dimly-lit dorm room.  Most Grateful Dead music does this for me too, as I was quite the fan and very sad when Jerry died.  I could not listen for several years. . . )

I suspect no one knows the answer to the original question which was why listen to the same music many times over.

I have about 600 CDs but listen to the same 50 more times than any others. Why? Because I like them best. Two years ago it was probably a different 50; two years from now it might be a different 50.

No need to over-analyse or invoke spirituality.

The simplest reason for listening to the same thing more than once, is that you didn't catch everything first time out, or perhaps a trip down memory lane.

Its ones History behind the album.

Ie?

what age you were when you bought it ?

What was going on in your life at the time when you first heard it?

Lots of things can make even a shite  album special to one.

I have loads of music memory of my fav and most played albums.

Good and Sad.

Stu. 

Stu, That's fine for older music. What about newer stuff?

Take that Beth Hart Joe Bonamassa album for instance, what makes you (and I ) keep playing it?

No special happenings or such for me.

Howard,

You might have seen my thread?

Tamz will never forget hearing it for the first time.

She has that that memory now.

Its in here head for ever.

Every time she plays that album or hears tracks from it? she will remember her dear old.

It was choice and so special to see her face ,

It took her and blew her away.

Its so not her normal listening.

It is in my normal listening zone and it still blows me away every time i hear it.

Because  the two of them are a perfect match and the production is 100% perfect.

I hope 2012 can bring a album to better it?

Its going to have to be something very very special though???? IMO.

Its now my DID  along with Jimi Hendrix all along the watch tower.

Sorry if i went a bit off thread.

Music is a passion.

Stu.

Some music is tied to emotional memory and some is not. New music unheard by me can deeply move me - but then you could ask what that means?

It means (for me) that I'm consciously aware of something important going on in levels that lie in deeper subconsciousness.

Music communicates to a wider consciousness immediately, without intellectual censor - that is what is so wonderful about this ancient human art.

The better the timing and immediacy of the musical rendition, the less chance of my intellect goinh 'Ugg that's wrong' and the more chance of me getting the message. Good music is also (for me) originated with a very large contribution from the subconscious of the Artist(s) themselves; the more they intellectually 'craft' their work, the less I seem to like it. A certain well-known female artist comes to mind.

Some Artists release wonderfully inspired music, then get carried away with their fame - inflate their egos and ruin everything they produce from then on; the intellect is feeble at creativity of itself.

Just some thoughts.

DB.

A girl friend of mine has a theory that women's creativity goes downhill after having kids!  G

But that is a lot of creativity used-up!

I think it can be replentished, it is more attitude of mind and self-worth IMO.

DB.

Having kids didn't stop this women's creativity.

Their is also one hell of a lot of women that have done great music after having kids.

Right, munch. I mean, Joni Mitchell had her first kid in her teens. Everything after that was gravy.

This thread or posts are so wrong??IMO.

Joni, did shed loads of great music after giving up her daughter.

The pain she must of gone through a that time?Only she and others that have been there and done that will ever know??

She still makes great music and paints great pictures.

Stu.

DB : Your comments on the concious and subconcious are spot on.

Daniel Levitin brings it all together beautifully in his book "This is Your Brain on Music", subtitled "The Science of a Human Obsession".

It deepens the understanding without detracting from the mystery of music.

Jan